Greater Manchester slams door on RDA
Author: Local Government Chronicle |
The Greater Manchester city region has turned its back on the North West Regional Development Agency and instead will develop its own proposals to form a local enterprise partnership to take complete charge of economic development across the city region.
In recent months local authority leaders across Greater Manchester and the wider north west have been vocal in their support for the North West Regional Development Agency, with the North West Local Authority leaders’ board – chaired by Manchester City Council leader Richard Leese – penning a letter to ministers asking that NWDA be spared from the government’s planned cull of England’s eight RDAs.
But at a meeting of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (Agma) executive on 25 June the ten council leaders of the city region made it clear that they no longer supported the continued existence of the NWDA.
The move came after Sir Howard Bernstein, Manchester City Council’s chief executive presented the Agma executive with a position paper on the future of the NWDA. The paper asked the executive to agree to “support the retention of the NWDA as a valuable contributor” to the region’s economic performances and a “close partner” to Agma in the delivery of the Greater Manchester strategy.
But LGC has been told that the ten leaders agreed not to support the report, which was to be sent on to ministers, and asked Sir Howard to “go away and think again”. “It is not often Howard is told to do that,” one source said.
LGC understands the leaders were surprised by the strength of the language in the budget earlier this month, which stated that all RDAs would be abolished and would be replaced by local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) – effectively consortia of councils banding together across sub-regions in partnership with business to drive forward local development. Sir Howard’s report was prepared prior to the budget.
LEPs will be particularly focused on England’s cities, the budget document said, and will be tasked with boosting the “coordination of public and private investment in transport, housing, skills, regeneration and other areas of economic development”.
“The language convinced us that the government was serious about devolving to cities – and that means the city region. The view was that the other parts of the region can work out what they want to do but we are pushing ahead,” the source said.
Mr Bernstein has now been asked to produce a further report that sets out the framework for economic development after the abolition of NWDA, which will then feed into Agma’s submission to government to form a LEP, due by 6 September.
But the move by Agma does not rule out “some form” of regional body remaining, Graham Burgess, Blackburn with Darwen BC chief executive, said. But he added that any regional body that did remain “would not be the RDA”.
He said: “It might, for example, have responsibility for co-ordinating major strategic projects, such as regional transport schemes – but it would be an investment agency and would be owned by and accountable to the local authorities.”